


Meet me in the barren wasteland

by PinkDogPlushie



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: Crack and Angst, Crangst, Everone fucking dies, F/F, F/M, Immortality, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-29
Updated: 2019-09-29
Packaged: 2020-11-01 15:22:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20817356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PinkDogPlushie/pseuds/PinkDogPlushie
Summary: Waking up to the thought of outliving his wife and his children, of walking the earth alone. Nightmares of standing in barren wastelands 6000 years in the future, all the people he had ever loved gone.





	Meet me in the barren wasteland

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so sorry. I don't know where this came from.  
But you know what they say: some are masters of death, others are masters of sex; I'm a master of crack.

The first to go was Major Winchester.

His wife, Donna, died young and sudden, and he simply couldn't live without her. He followed her two months later, from a broken heart.

He goes to the Major's funeral with a feeling of inadequacy. He shouldn't be there, mourning a man who was barely over 50. It feels unfair and wrong.

His wife hugs him close and kisses his cheek, anxious to return home to their first child, who is in the care of his mother.

The second to go was the Good Father.

Mulcahy had left detailed instructions for his services. It was a beautiful ceremony, barely 10 years after Major Winchester's death. He went to that funeral with his wife at his side and his son, now a preteen. He had to fight the feeling of deja-vu all the way through, as well as the rage and the bile in his mouth. Mulcahy hadn't died of a broken heart; something else had guided his hand when he took all those pills.

Then, merely 5 years later, it was the Colonel's turn.

Mrs. Potter welcomed them into her house, as well as his daughter. They were polite and thanked the former MASHers for going all the way to Missouri, but the melancholy was hard to shake.

But it was easier, somehow. The Colonel was very old, he was supposed to be the first to go. Others just beat him to the spot.

It was that time that he stared to notice certain things: how Major Burns was nowhere to be seen, how it was only Lorraine's hand in hers that kept Major Houlihan from falling apart, how Captain Pierce and the Hunnicutts were always together, how BJ and Peg's son had Hawkeye's signature eyes and black mop of hair...

That was the time the others started to compliment him on how he seemed to be defying time, how he looked almost like in Korea. He wasn't sure about that; he only wanted the deaths to stop, to live a long life with his wife and his now three kids before he had to bid farewell to someone else. They had been there when it was his father's funeral, they understood.

The years passed. His mother died next. The 4077th gathered again, and now it seemed like they only did so for funerals. Death brought them together 30 years ago, though you wouldn't think that from looking at him.

For everyone outside his family, it was spooky and uncanny, but otherwise harmless. His skin was as smooth as it had been in Uijeongbu, his joints were still fine where those of his comrades started to crack, his hair was as black as ever. It was weird, for them, but then again, hadn't he always been weird?

But inside his house, it was waking up to the thought of outliving his wife and his children, of walking the earth alone. It was nightmares of standing in barren wastelands 6000 years in the future, all the people he had ever loved gone.

She tried to make the best of the situation: she had been very young when they met, so it wasn't as blatant as it was with, well, everyone else. They had many children, 7 to be exact, and they gave love to each and every one of them. He watched his kids graduate high school, then college, go on to great things, even when he looked more like their brother than their father.

Radar died on an accident in his farm. He had lost almost all his hair. In death, the boy looked older than him, when 40 years earlier it had been the other way around.

Major Houlihan died in action, and Lorraine Anderson received the flag on her ceremony.

Captains Pierce and Hunnicutt died within 2 years of each other, age having wrinkled their skin and matured their eyes, greyed their hairs and changed them almost beyond recognition. He was still the same, even when his own wife was starting to look like his mother, even when one of his daughters brought his grandkids to the funeral 'cause she couldn't leave them with anyone.

He hit rock-bottom when his oldest died in a stupid car accident. He drank himself to an stupor, he threw his clothes on the bedroom floor, he screamed until his throat went raw, he smashed the mirror when it wouldn't show him anything other than his unwrinkled skin, his black hair, his 30-year-old body with a soul that might as well be 100.

He came to an arragement with his wife: he would move away and come to visit her as often as he could. He would leave his city, where he had lived his whole life, and move to Iowa, with Radar's former wife, the only outsider that understood his situation to an extent.

Time passed. Another of his children passed away, but he couldn't even be with his grandchildren; he had to make do with what his wife told him. He moved away when Radar's widow died unexpectedly. He scoured the country, went to places he never imagined he would. He lived in Vermont, and in Boston, and in Mill Valley, and he started to actively avoid anyone he knew. He became a living ghost.

The last to die was his wife.

He waited nearby as the funeral was in process, watching his children cry and mourn. His coat and glasses disguised him until he could visit her grave.

When there was no one else, he removed his ridiculous attire, revealing what had been his wife's favorite dress, the one she always said suited him best.

What Soon-Lee had even seen in him, he would never know.

He kneeled in front of her grave, left the bouquet he had brought, passed a hand by his hair. His everblack hair.

He felt numb. He was sad, yes, but it was a muted feeling. He had accepted his lot in life. He would see the future, he would live until his body decided it had enough.

People would say it was a miracle, but for him it felt like a curse.

He closed his eyes, his throat tight, trying to banish the images of eons-old wastelands that plagued his sleep. That was his fate. That was his future.

  
"Did you know her?" a gravekeeper asked, when he saw him stay so long by her grave.

It wasn't the first time someone asked him this. A young Lebanese man visiting a 90-year-old Korean lady was quite odd. So, Max Klinger gave his standard answer, the one that was bound to keep everyone safe.

"No."

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry again.  
Immortality sucks.


End file.
